News Bomb

As the concern over fake news spreads, an online newspaper in Chile has joined others in recommending Waugh’s Scoop. See earlier posts. This appears in a column “VerComeryLeer [SeeEatRead]” by Miguel Ortiz in the digital journal El Definido:

We are being bombarded, permanently, by information. We get news on Facebook, Twitter, the TV, the newspapers … and this has included fake news, which unfortunately quickly goes viral. In that context it is very illuminating to read one of the funniest novels by the British writer Evelyn Waugh: News bomb! (Scoop)…Published in 1938 this novel is a satire of tabloid journalism and correspondents abroad. To write it, Waugh relied on his own experience as a journalist for the Daily Mail, when he was sent to cover the invasion of Abyssinia by Benito Mussolini…The protagonist’s journey becomes something surreal, because the other war correspondents are drinking, the alleged war does not exist, and journalists invent information for the sole purpose of “scoring a hit” [“golpear” ?] and influencing public opinion.

A privileged pen, to laugh with the best English humor. (And if you like the author and want to read something more serious: Brideshead Revisited [“Retorno a Brideshead“], a jewel).

The Spanish version of Scoop recommended in the article is entitled ¡Noticia bomba! Una novela de periodistas. According to Carlos Villar Flor, the version under this title was first published in Barcelona in 1985 and was translated by Antonio Mauri. An earlier version translated by Horacio Laurora as Primicia was published in 1947 in Buenos Aires. See EWNS 42.1 (2011). The translation from the article is an edited version of Google Translate.